Friend: Violence unlikely for pair

Sunday

Feb 10, 2008 at 12:01 AMFeb 10, 2008 at 9:05 AM

Richard Wanke Jr. and Diane Chavez were well-known peace advocates and volunteered together at The Peace Store in Rockford. And now, they’re both in jail, being questioned as police investigate the Wednesday slaying of Rockford attorney Gregory Clark, 60.

Geri Nikolai and Corina Curry

Richard Wanke Jr. and Diane Chavez were well-known peace advocates and volunteered together at The Peace Store in Rockford. They shared a duplex. Friends were accustomed to seeing them together, and Chavez often drove Wanke around town.

And now, they’re both in jail, being questioned as police investigate the Wednesday slaying of Rockford attorney Gregory Clark, 60.

“It was a mutually beneficial relationship. They helped each other out a lot,” said Janie Wilson-Cook, a longtime acquaintance.

Wanke and Chavez, who have shared a Signal Hill neighborhood home for at least the past six years, made separate court appearances Friday, two days after Clark — Wanke’s former lawyer — was gunned down on a wintery afternoon while he used a snowblower outside his home in the 1700 block of Oakforest Drive.

Some people who knew the pair believed they were romantically involved, but others said they were just friends.

Neighbors say they drove a blue minivan that they have not seen parked outside the pair’s residence in the 1100 block of Grant Avenue since Wednesday morning.
Police reported Friday that they believe they have found the blue van that was used in the shooting.

Neither Wanke, 46, nor Chavez, 49, has been named as a murder suspect, but they were named publicly by a judge and a lawyer at the court appearances as being part of a police investigation into Clark’s slaying.

Wanke is no stranger to the legal system.

According to court documents from a 2006 burglary charge against him, Chavez posted Wanke’s $1,000 bail in March of that year and was supposed to testify on his behalf at a sentencing hearing scheduled for Friday. Clark was Wanke’s court-appointed attorney on the case.

He was accused Jan. 17, 2006, of entering the Rockford College office of Robert McCauley and stealing a laptop computer. A jury convicted Wanke of the burglary on Sept. 19, 2007. He was to be sentenced Nov. 5 but won a continuance until Dec. 11. A snow day prevented sentencing on that day, and a new date was set for Friday.

Wanke was picked up by police and jailed Wednesday. Judge John Truitt said he revoked Wanke’s bond from the 2006 burglary conviction because information from police investigating Clark’s death led him to believe Wanke may pose a danger to the community.

Chavez was arrested Thursday on a charge of obstructing justice. No details were provided. She is being held on $500,000 bond. It was revealed by her lawyer in court Friday that the charge is related to the murder investigation.

Court records, newspaper clippings, and comments from people who knew Wanke and Chavez described a relationship that goes back at least to the early 1990s, when Chavez worked at The Peace Store, a small shop at 623 Seventh St. that sold handmade merchandise from around the world and offered information on environmental and other issues. The store went out of business seven years ago. Chavez managed the Peace Store, and Wanke was a volunteer there.

Chavez was in the courtroom more than 10 years ago when George Pack testified against Wanke in a burglary case. A self-described liberal, Pack said he knew Chavez through her political activism.

Pack, who then taught at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Rockford, had hired Wanke to paint his home. Pack said Wanke burglarized his home.

“As I was testifying against Richard, she mouthed to me, ‘How could you?’” Pack said.
Pack, who now is associate vice president of research and chairman of the chemistry department at the University of Louisville, said Wanke and Chavez were often together.
Some friends say they assumed they were romantically involved, but Wilson-Cook, who did business with Wanke when she ran a computer store in Rockford, said the couple denied that.

“They went to great pains to explain they were not” in a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship, said Wilson-Cook.

“I never got the idea they were a romantic couple. I do know Richard had a great influence on her,” said Wilson-Cook. “He helped her out a lot at the Peace Store. I know that he wanted it to be a bigger venture, and she was happy with it being a Bohemian kind of thing.

“They helped each other out a lot. He’d be at the Peace Store building shelves or unpacking items,” Wilson-Cook said. “She would drive him around. He knew how to drive but, as a rule, he didn’t choose to drive.”

In a Register Star story in 1997 about the Peace Store, Wanke was quoted as a volunteer who said the store was important because, “If people know more about all cultures, they can’t hate them.”

But Wanke told the newspaper that the Peace Store was primarily not a retail outlet but a place for people seeking information on grass-roots organizations.

“We want to get people involved in community organizations,” Wanke said. “We help people find other nonprofit sources for whatever they are interested in.”

Wilson-Cook said she didn’t know Chavez well, describing her as “quiet and insular.”
Wilson-Cook, who now works in the visual resource center in Northern Illinois

University’s art department, said she would be shocked if either Chavez or Wanke are involved in the murder.

“Never in my dealings with Richard, no matter how cross either of us got, never at any point was I fearful of any violence,” she said.

Some acquaintances believed Wanke and Chavez owned the duplex on Grant Avenue together, but county tax records show Chavez is the sole owner of the $50,000 property.

According to city Inspector Jim Vronch, who was in the home with police Wednesday, it appeared as though Wanke and Chavez lived together in the upper apartment, the only place where food was found. Vronch said the lower unit was filled with a clutter of boxes, TVs, computers and other things.

After detecting a gas leak, Vronch had the gas shut off and declared the home unsafe to occupy because of the leak. The city Building Department then boarded it up.

Neighbors said the couple had two blue minivans, and they primarily drove the newer one, which had gold trim around the wheels. Residents of the Grant Avenue area also said that Chavez and Wanke kept to themselves most of the time. Chavez would exchange greetings, but Wanke said hello sometimes and sometimes not, they said.

The pair was never a problem in the neighborhood, residents said.

They were ticketed together in 2005 for a license violation of the Illinois Fish and Aquatic Life Code. They both gave the same Grant Avenue address, and both were ordered to pay $75 in fines.

Chavez worked as a paralegal for Prairie State Legal Services for about three years in the late 1980s. Although the Peace Store was not a full-time operation, it was listed as her occupation in the City Directory for most of the 1990s. In 2001 when the store closed, the newspaper reported she was a caseworker for the Illinois Public Aid office.

Wanke, who grew up in Cherry Valley, graduated from Guilford High and, in 2001, got a bachelor of fine arts degree from Northern Illinois University. He was involved in the opening of the art galleries at 317 Market Street in 1985 and was listed in the 1988 City Directory as a “preparator” at the Rockford Art Museum. Friends and his mother said he earned money by repairing computers and doing jobs for people.

Staff writer Geri Nikolai can be reached at 815-987-1337 or gnikolai@rrstar.com. Corina Curry can be reached at 815-987-1395 or ccurry@rrstar.com.